Yay, extension!

[suaine.livejournal.com]

More for the amnesty challenge, because I just can't stop myself. This is just a silly bit of pre-adolescent humiliation, but oh so much fun.


Curtain
by Suaine


Steve McQueen never got scared. But then Steve McQueen never had to be Juliet in the musical production of Romeo and Juliet in his elementary school - or else he would have made movies like Mary Poppins instead of Bullit.

"Stan, you're on."

With a half-hearted 'good-luck' his crazed music teacher shoved him on the stage. 'It's going to be fun,' she had said. 'We're doing it differently this year,' she'd said. 'Girls play boy parts,' she'd said. 'To be fair, boys will play girl parts too,' she'd said. 'You've got such a lovely voice, Stan,' she'd said. But it was his mother who'd said, 'Play the part and make your mom proud.'

So he did. He said his words without stumbling over them all too much, he gave Jimmy Kern the finger when he called him fagboy and he sang his little heart out.

But here, now, in front of all these people and his mom in first row, saying 'that's my little boy' to anyone who happened to catch her attention, it was the hardest thing he ever did.

He'd always had a problem with words. They got all jumbled in his head, though the music made it a little easier. He liked music, it held him up and gave him a safety net. He was glad when the singing part started, glad for the music to take the words and carry them away.

He wasn't so glad about the frilly dress. It's that kind of thing that follows a kid from Elementary right into High School. He didn't want to be called 'fagboy' in High School, even though he only had a vague idea what it meant. He'd heard people got dumped into toilets for lesser things in High School.

The part he liked most about the whole thing was watching Maria Cortez play Romeo, singing like a nightingale and kicking ass like Frank Bullit. She would be his girlfriend if she hadn't already kissed Joey Montrelle last Christmas and Stan wasn't so scared to ask her if they were together or not.

During the big death scene he got to kiss her on the lips and she smiled. But Joey, who'd played Juliet's mother, glowered at him from the side and made obvious gestures. Well, so much for being dumped in a toilet. Anyway, he wanted to be Bullit, not date him, and his girlfriend was going to be delicate and beautiful like a rose.

The big solo ended on a high note he couldn't quite reach and Joey's revenge came with a rip of his dress and much laughter among the audience. At least he wasn't a girl; it wasn't that bad standing half-naked in front of at least two hundred adults, shivering, his voice breaking as he fell to the ground more from humiliation than the apothecary's poison.

By the time the curtain dropped, he knew that Stan would never live this down. This was going to hang on to Stan forever. He put Stan in a box marked 'done'. As the teacher started fussing ('Stan, what happened with the beautiful dress? Are you all right? You did a marvelous job though, marvelous!') he smiled at her and said:

"Don't call me Stan. I go by Ray."